DNA evidence has revealed that the oldest known common male ancestor is 340,000 years old, more than twice as old as previous estimates.

New Scientist reports that the sample comes from a recently deceased man named Albert Perry. After the African-American South Carolina man died, one of his relatives submitted a sample of his DNA to a company called Family Tree DNA for analysis.

snip

All previously compared DNA samples pointed to a common Y chromosome traced back to man who lived between 60,000 and 140,000 years ago. But Perrys DNA sample broke the trend, not matching up with this common ancestor.

"It's a cool discovery," Jon Wilkins of the Ronin Institute in Montclair, N.J., told New Scientist. "We geneticists have been looking at Y chromosomes about as long as we've been looking at anything. Changing where the root of the Y-chromosome tree is at this point is extremely surprising."

After the initial tests on Perrys DNA, geneticists at the University of Arizona conducted further tests to confirm the anomaly. The Y chromosome in Perrys test matched up with those of 11 men who all lived in one village in Cameroon.

University of Arizona researcher Michael Hammer says Perrys DNA suggests there may have been an earlier species of humans that went extinctbut not before interbreeding with the more modern version of man.

There was just "gay" men back then, except they didn't know they were gay. And, they kept trying and trying and trying to procreate, until one of them children turned out to be different, and we now know that different type of "human" as the female of the species.

Didnt match the oldest human ancestor? Mus be descended from apes and pigs...

There must me something there in the woodpile.....maybe this thing:

Green Lizard Man of South Carolina

"I looked back and saw something running across the field towards me. It was about 25 yards away and I saw red eyes glowing. I ran into the car and as I locked it, the thing grabbed the door handle. I could see him from the neck down  the three big fingers, long black nails and green rough skin. It was strong and angry. I looked in my mirror and saw a blur of green running. I could see his toes and then he jumped on the roof of my car. I thought I heard a grunt and then I could see his fingers through the front windshield, where they curled around on the roof. I sped up and swerved to shake the creature off."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizard_Man_of_Scape_Ore_Swamp

16
posted on 03/08/2013 8:10:43 PM PST
by haffast
(Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. -Abe Lincoln)

“I get no respect I tell ya’’. “You know you’re old when your kids talk about ya right in front of ya’’. “What are we gonna do with Pop, Pop can’t stay here’’ “Mean while Pop’s in the corner drooling’’. No respect I tell ya.’

Every man now living on earth is descended from this individual male who lived 340,000 years ago. Of course he had parents, grandparents,uncles, cousins and lots of other relatives. But the descendants of all of his uncles and brothers have died out by now. (I'm sure in your family tree there are collateral relatives who either died without children or whose children have no descendants living now.) He is the last, not the first, common ancestor of modern humanity.

We only have a minuscule percentage of the puzzle pieces on the table.

There are a lot of pieces between this guy and any of the known founding Eves.

We know roughly where the pieces need to be to put the puzzle together, but we also know there are a lot of blank places on the table, we know the missing pieces are scattered in various boxes in the attic, the basement, next door and that well over half of them got lost in various moves from here to there.

We know it’s a family portrait, we have a vague idea of the background, we don’t know exactly which family members sat for the portrait, and there are enough puzzle pieces in the boxes to make a couple dozen portraits, landscapes, pictures of trains and Parisian cafés.

Other than that, it’s a simple matter of putting the puzzle together...

We know its a family portrait, we have a vague idea of the background, we dont know exactly which family members sat for the portrait, and there are enough puzzle pieces in the boxes to make a couple dozen portraits, landscapes, pictures of trains and Parisian cafés.

Oh, please.

The pieces are buried in backyards. Random backyards. All over town. And no one thought to mark the locations at the time of burial.

26
posted on 03/08/2013 8:46:18 PM PST
by exDemMom
(Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)

Wait a minute! There's something wrong here - they've lost a couple of millions of years. We've heard it repeatedly until now - 'man has been on the earth for millions of years'. Now they want to roll it back to only 340K?

They never cease to amaze, these 'scientists.'

Truth is, man has only been on this earth for a little over 4000 years - per a book called the Bible.

Men who have no children or only daughters don't pass on their Y chromosome. Women who have no children or only sons don't pass their mitochondrial DNA to their grandchildren. (Theirs sons have it but they can't pass it on.) This man is one who happens to have unbroken lines of male offspring until present time. There must be somebody like that. If you go back in time far enough, there is presumably only one, a great-to-the-n'th-grandfather of all presently living men. All other Y chromosomes from his contemporaries have been lost. There can of course be many generations before him. Similar for women. These "Adam" and "Eve" characters may never have met, could be separated by thousands of years and miles. This is true for every other chromosome as well, even though they jump between the genders. Eventually they'll try to estimate an age of an original ancestor for each of them too.

32
posted on 03/08/2013 10:17:20 PM PST
by BitWielder1
(Corporate Profits are better than Government Waste)

No immaculate conception at all. It just means that the descendants of any other male humans perished without contributing their Y-chromosome to any of the males in today’s world. All present males have inherited the Y-chromosome of this single human male who lived in the distant past. The date is surmised by relationships to surviving DNA and time periods required to accumulate changes in the genes due to natural causes over time.

Good to see the earliest date for humanity being pushed back even further. Previously it was 250K, now 340K.

Just imagine all the civilizations that could have arisen, fallen, and all remains disappeared it that time frame (our current civilization is at best only 6K old, although Hindu literature would put that date back an additional 16K).

If each civilization lasted just 10K and it took an additional 10K for all remains to subsume to Nature, then dividing by 20 we get something like 17 prior civilizations. No need for Aliens to explain the oddities and anomalies found in various places.

38
posted on 03/09/2013 5:36:22 AM PST
by PIF
(They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)

Wait a minute! There's something wrong here - they've lost a couple of millions of years. We've heard it repeatedly until now - 'man has been on the earth for millions of years'. Now they want to roll it back to only 340K?

Humans (but not necessarily Homo sapiens) have been around for millions of years.

What happened here is what another poster said above. The male chromosome is lost whenever a man does not have sons. So, in a small population (as humans were that long ago), it is conceivable that there is only one unbroken line of male ancestry. As the population grows larger, with more males carrying that variant of the Y chromosome, the chances of that specific chromosome surviving are greater; other Y chromosomes have a larger chance of disappearing.

This story is a bit misleading. The ancestor 340K years ago is not the source of Y chromosomes for the entire population. That specific Y variant only exists in one village in Africa. All other men tested have a newer Y chromosome variant from an ancestor who lived around 200K years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if other families with variant Y chromosomes are found as time goes on. We are still a long way from knowing the genome of every single person, or even a statistically relevant number of people.

39
posted on 03/09/2013 5:48:37 AM PST
by exDemMom
(Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)

Is the author suggesting there was an intermediate progenitorto NOT include Neandertal?

What does it suggest about the history of a wrecked car when the 'car'cass is in Los Angels and in the glove box are gas station receipts from NYC, a later one from Cleveland, and a still later one from Tulsa?

Can you determine with certainty from this that the car passed through Phoenix or Las Vegas or Reno?

After the African-American South Carolina man died, one of his relatives submitted a sample of his DNA to a company called Family Tree DNA for analysis... All previously compared DNA samples pointed to a common Y chromosome traced back to man who lived between 60,000 and 140,000 years ago. But Perrys DNA sample broke the trend, not matching up with this common ancestor.

It means that the earlier studies suffered from severe constraints of data.

Multiregionalism ping!

Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

45
posted on 03/09/2013 10:53:23 AM PST
by SunkenCiv
(Romney would have been worse, if you're a dumb ass.)

The Y chromosome in Perrys test matched up with those of 11 men who all lived in one village in Cameroon. University of Arizona researcher Michael Hammer says Perrys DNA suggests there may have been an earlier species of humans that went extinct...

No, it shows, once again, that the reason for apparent greater genetic variability in Africa isn't due to it being the oldest, it shows that populations are genetically narrowed by isolation.

46
posted on 03/09/2013 10:56:35 AM PST
by SunkenCiv
(Romney would have been worse, if you're a dumb ass.)

"Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]

47
posted on 03/09/2013 10:57:48 AM PST
by SunkenCiv
(Romney would have been worse, if you're a dumb ass.)

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